Muscle Activation

There are a lot of people out there who work out, lift weights, and compete in a sport, and they do so with poor form or training, which leads to injury, and they end up in our office. There are also many people who work out, lift weights, and compete in a sport with performance form, and excellent training/coaching, and they still get injured, and end up in our office. It makes sense that the former group has injuries, but why the latter? It’s because so often, injuries are caused or propagated by muscles being out of balance, or muscles working out of proper sequence. Our brains are incredible and will choose to move us through any activity they can from standing up to get out of bed, to crushing a cross-court winner on the tennis court, to lifting 300 pounds on a deadlift–BUT they will only use the muscles available to do so.

Our brains are designed to produce movement and patterns and will get the job done even if it means putting strain on certain muscles, joints, and nerves (at least temporarily). For example, if you need to powerfully extend your hip to run, but your glute muscles are shut off, you will use extra reserve power from your lower back muscles, hamstrings, and calves on that same side. It works, but only for a finite amount of time. Eventually, things break down and you have an injury somewhere above or below the muscle that’s turned off.

We use various muscle activation techniques, such as NKT (Neurokinetic Therapy), PDTR (Proprioceptive Deep Tendon Reflex), and RPR (Reflexive Performance Reset), that seek to turn on each individual muscle at first, and later, to ensure the balance between muscles on both sides of a joint, which can rapidly improve pain, power, and performance. So whether you’re a high school athlete, a Mom who picks up young children all day, or an aging adult wanting to stay active and enjoy your life, muscle activation is right for you.